Managing People and Organizations

Module 3 – Organization and Individuals

Lecture Sequence 2 - Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

BITS Pilani
Pilani | Dubai | Goa | Hyderabad
Dr. Annapoorna Gopal
Learning Objectives

• After studying this lecture sequence, you should be able to:

– Contrast the three components of an attitude.
– Summarize the relationship between attitudes and behavior.
– Compare and contrast the major job attitudes.
– Define job satisfaction and show how it can be measured.
– Summarize the main causes of job satisfaction.
– Identify four employee responses to dissatisfaction.
– Show whether there are cultural differences in job satisfaction.

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Attitudes

Evaluative statements or judgments concerning objects, people, or events

Three components of an attitude:

Affective The emotional or

Cognitive
feeling segment of
The opinion or an attitude
Behavioral
belief segment of
an attitude
An intention to behave
in a certain way toward
Attitude someone or something

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Does Behavior Always Follow from Attitudes?

• Leon Festinger – No, the reverse is sometimes true!

• Cognitive Dissonance: Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or
between behavior and attitudes
– Individuals seek to reduce this uncomfortable gap, or dissonance, to reach stability and
consistency
– Consistency is achieved by changing the attitudes, modifying the behaviors, or through
rationalization
– Desire to reduce dissonance depends on:
• Importance of elements
• Degree of individual influence
• Rewards involved in dissonance

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Predicting Behavior from Attitudes

– Important attitudes have a strong relationship to behavior.

– The closer the match between attitude and behavior, the stronger the relationship:
• Specific attitudes predict specific behavior
• General attitudes predict general behavior
– The more frequently expressed an attitude, the better predictor it is.
– High social pressures reduce the relationship and may cause dissonance.
– Attitudes based on personal experience are stronger predictors.

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Review

1. Any incompatibility between two or more attitudes or between behavior and

attitudes is _____________.

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Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHQIBNyuuD4

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What are the Major Job Attitudes?

• Job Satisfaction
– A positive feeling about the job resulting from an evaluation of its characteristics
• Job Involvement
– Degree of psychological identification with the job where perceived performance is
important to self-worth
• Psychological Empowerment
– Belief in the degree of influence over the job, competence, job meaningfulness, and
autonomy

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Review

1. Go through below caselet and answer the questions

 Ravi Goyal, 38, heads the international marketing of an engineering firm. He travels to at least 20
countries in one year. He travels more than four times in a year to some countries. He has learned to
sleep on planes and taxis so that he can start working as soon as he reaches his destination. He
responds to customer messages throughout the day. Even when he is home and gets up in the middle of
the night to check on his children, he logs on to his e-mail id on his BlackBerry and sends a reply if there
is an urgent message. He says, “I do not count my hours of work. I just work for as long as I need to.”

1. Do you think that only certain individuals are attracted to these types of jobs, or is it the characteristics of
the jobs themselves that are satisfying?

2. Given that Ravi tends to be satisfied with his job, how might this satisfaction relate to his job
performance, citizenship behavior, and turnover?

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Job Satisfaction

• One of the primary job attitudes measured.

– Broad term involving a complex individual summation of a number of discrete job
elements.
• How to measure?
– Single global rating (one question/one answer)
– Summation score (many questions/one average)
• Are people satisfied in their jobs?
– In India, yes. Seventy-one percent of Indian employees
– surveyed are satisfied with their jobs.
– Results vary by employee facets of the job.
– Compensation, benefits, and incentives are the most problematic elements in India.

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Causes of Job Satisfaction

• Pay influences job satisfaction only to a point.

– Once an individual reaches a comfortable level of living, there is no
relationship between amount of pay and job satisfaction.

• Personality can influence job satisfaction.

– Negative people are usually not satisfied with their jobs.
– Those with positive core self-evaluation are more satisfied with their
jobs.

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Employee Responses to Dissatisfaction

Active

Exit Voice
• Behavior directed • Active and
toward leaving constructive
the organization attempts to
improve
conditions
Destructive Constructive

Neglect Loyalty
• Allowing • Passively waiting
conditions to for conditions to
worsen improve

Passive

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Outcomes of Job Satisfaction

• Job Performance
– Satisfied workers are more productive AND more productive workers are more satisfied!
– The causality may run both ways.
• Organizational Citizenship Behaviors
– Satisfaction influences OCB through perceptions of fairness.
• Customer Satisfaction
– Satisfied frontline employees increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
• Absenteeism
– Satisfied employees are moderately less likely to miss work.
• Turnover
– Satisfied employees are less likely to quit.
Despite the overwhelming evidence of the impact of job satisfaction on the bottom line, most managers
are either unconcerned about or overestimate worker satisfaction.

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Pause and Ponder

1. What causes job satisfaction for you as an individual? For most people, is
pay or the work itself more important? For you, what is important?

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Global Implications

• Are Employees in Some Cultures More Satisfied With Their Jobs?

– According to some studies, Western workers appear to be more satisfied
than those in Eastern cultures. This may be because Westerners
emphasize positive emotions and individual happiness more than do those
in Eastern cultures.
– Another study showed that Indian employees rated their satisfaction
higher than other employees in the Asia-Pacific region.

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Review

1. Job satisfaction is not related to:

a) Absenteeism
b) OCB
c) Memory
d) Productivity
e) Performance

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Summary and Managerial Implications

• Managers should watch employee attitudes:

– They give warnings of potential problems
– They influence behavior
• Managers should try to increase job satisfaction and generate positive job
attitudes
– Reduces costs by lowering turnover, absenteeism, tardiness, theft, and
increasing OCB
• Focus on the intrinsic parts of the job: make work challenging and interesting
– Pay is not enough

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M3_L2 : Assessment Time

1. Organizations often conduct attitude surveys of their employees. What is it that they want to

know? Go to: http://www.hr-survey.com/EmployeeAttitude.htm to learn more about

employee attitude surveys. What you think would be the three most important topics to

include on an attitude survey and why.

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